Saturday, March 9, 2013

Jerusalem, My Happy Home: Part 12

I want to write about Masada.
Qumran and the Dead Sea were cool, but Masada was so important. I’ll just focus
there, and hope to write carefully, knowing I am apt to offend deep
sensibilities.

Masada is way out there in
the Judean Desert, high up on a mountaintop, in view of the Dead Sea. The
Hasmoenean rebels fortified it when they were fighting Antiochus IV Epiphanes
in the 160s B.C.E. Then Herod the Great, a builder of edifices and a paranoid
par excellence, constructed a magnificent fortified palace here between 37 and
31 B.C.E. It was a small village, but a first rate Roman getaway, defended by incredibly
steep cliffs and high walls, with stores of food and a water supply,
deliberately designed to withstand a siege. Herod spared no expense to make
this place impregnable.

In 66 C.E. the Jewish
Rebellion against Rome, beginning far to the North at Caesarea Maritima,
brought a swift and devastating response from the Empire. In 70, Jerusalem was
sacked and Herod’s Temple destroyed. The zealots, the second most extreme
revolutionary party, had led the rebellion. The Sicarii (perhaps a splinter party from the zealots), were
more extreme, more inclined to terrorism and assassination. The Sicarii escaped
Jerusalem and took refuge in the old Masada fortress. In 73, the Romans laid
siege to Masada. Eventually the Romans breached the wall and were going to
enter the citadel the next day. Facing certain defeat, the Jewish leader
Menahem eloquently persuaded his followers to choose death over defeat. That
night, the rebel soldiers slew their own wives and children. By a process of
drawing lots, 10 soldiers were chosen to kill the others. One soldier drew the
lot to kill the other nine then fall on his own sword. When the Romans entered
Masada, they were awed by the heroic courage and honor of the rebels – 960 of
them dead in one night.

Masada is a model for heroic
defenses like the Mesolonghi in the Greek War for Independence (1924) and the
Alamo in the Texas Revolution (1836). But here’s my problem with valorizing the
rebel defenders of Masada:

Yesterday we sat on the side
of the Mount of Olives at the Dominus Flavit site and read Luke 19: 41ff, where
Jesus wept over Jerusalem, saying, “If you, even you, had only known what would
bring you peace – but now it is hidden from your eyes.” He went on to prophesy
siege and destruction. Marcus Borg, N. T. Wright, and the late Walter Wink have
all portrayed Jesus as calling Israel to repent from nationalistic violence and
turn to non-violent ways of finding freedom despite Roman rule.

One woman at Masada did not
participate in the mass suicide. She slipped away with five children and hid
them from the rebel soldiers. I say the woman who saved the children was real
hero of Masada -- not those who killed their own families and themselves. The
tragic death of the rebels at Masada was a classic case of those who live by
the sword dying by the sword. Not long before the siege, the rebels themselves
had raided the nearby Jewish village of Ein Gedi, killing 700 women and
children, in order to take their food and resources to equip Masada to
withstand a siege. But passing a verdict on people long dead is not the
important point. Jesus’ message to us is the point. In order to explain it, I
need to distinguish among three things. These are my definitions:

Patriotism – is love of one’s
country, commitment to the health, happiness, and flourishing of one’s land and
people. It makes patriots serve the common good.

Nationalism – is a
competitive drive to make one’s nation first, to be richer, stronger, smarter,
better than other nations. The need to be first makes it intolerable for a
nationalist to see his nation dominated by another.

Imperialism – is nationalism
on steroids. The imperialist wants his nation to prove it is the best by
dominating other nations.

Masada is a case of
nationalism resisting imperialism. But notice how the Romans admired the
rebels. The same values, the same impulse that undergirds nationalism leads
ultimately to imperialism. The nationalist and the imperialist are not so
different after all. Heroic martyrs to nationalist resistance establish a
country’s righteous claim to become an empire. Violence in defense of one’s own
freedom evolves all to readily into the violence to deprive someone else of his
or her freedom. The cause of freedom is righteous, but the means to win it can
corrupt. Patriotism is good – but nationalism and imperialism are two sides of
one evil coin.

None of us is exempt from
using the experience of victimization as an excuse to commit the same wrong
against someone else. The martyrdom of Christians during the period of
persecution gave us our moral mandate to commit atrocities against pagans
during the reign of Justinian and to go on committing pogroms and against Jews
for centuries. See James Carroll, The Sword of Constantine. When we start in
violence, ending in violence is all but certain.

Jesus prescribed a different
way of responding to oppression. He said, “Do not mirror violence with
violence.” Do not do unto others as they have done unto you. Resist, but
non-violently, with wisdom, with intelligence, cleverly, with a godly
relational power stronger than the dominating power of brute force. It is a
spiritual practice. It is political aikido.

I know I say this as a white
middle class American. I say it from the perspective of the imperialist. In
that sense, I have no right to speak. Jesus clearly condemned the power of
empire as well as the attempt to overthrow empire by empire’s own violent
means. But Jesus was one of the oppressed people. So was Gandhi. So was Martin
Luther King, Jr. So was Lech Walesa (despite his recent anti-gay statements he
is a hero for freedom). So are Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, and Aung San Su
Kyi. They all used Jesus’ way brilliantly. When we raise Jesus’ teaching about
non-violence, the automatic response is, “What about Hitler? What about the
holocaust?” It is a fair question and I don’t know that I have the answer. But
here’s a fact to remember. The only country in Europe that simply chose not to
participate in the holocaust was Denmark – and they did it through non-violent,
clever, relational-power resistance. Starting with the king, the entire country
wore the yellow star that labeled Jews. Solidarity, not violence, stopped the
holocaust cold in Denmark.

Opposing evil is crucial. But
how we oppose it is even more so. Reinhold Niebuhr said that democracy is not
threatened as much by its enemies as by the power it uses to defeat its
enemies. That was never more true than today.

1 comment:

Very interesting and inspiring post, Bishop. One small quibble: the legend of the Danes (led by their king) wearing yellow stars in solidarity with the Jews is apocryphal. See snopes.com at http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/denmark.aspHowever, the real-life story is even more inspiring: when the Germans issued the order to deport the Danish Jews, the Danish population banded together and saved nearly all of the Danish Jews by deploying fishing boats and every other kind of boat to get them to safety in Sweden. Fewer than 300 Danish Jews perished in the Holocaust. The truth makes your point just as well as the legend. Thanks for your very interesting posts from the Holy Land!